


Coyote

by millenial_falcon



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Deadlock Gang, Deadlock Jesse McCree, Gen, Jesse bringing teeth to a gun fight, Young Jesse McCree, maybe a bit more than canon-typical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 05:41:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13404633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millenial_falcon/pseuds/millenial_falcon
Summary: By evening, he will be a wild story, dangerous and mean. They will pour whiskey down his throat while they celebrate, clap him on the back, call him little savage with gore still caked to his chest, and he will be proud, hair matted stiff and liquor streaking tracks over his skin.





	Coyote

The job went sideways, because of course it did. It always did with Campión's people, but who listened when he brought that up, who cared what he had to say about shit. The negotiator and his second had drawn first, though that would mean fuck-all anyway if they came back empty-handed. If they came back at all, if they made it out of this empty, shithole bar with its waxy windows and cigarette-burned tables. Somewhere on a middle ground between Campión and Deadlock's territories and the four of them locked in a Mexican stand-off until a sniper ventilated Tío Alvin's skull. Blood singing and breath coarse, he'd kicked the table on its side with as much force as his skinny legs and adrenaline could muster, blown the faces off the negotiator and his second before either could react, dropped behind cover. Backup from both sides came quick, no one trusting anyone further than they could spit, ready to pull out an advantage before the other guy could get it. But Campión's people were the ones camped out in the back, piling in from the kitchen, and his allies came from the front, put him on the wrong side of the fight, cut off, trapped, and then he was overrun, and then he was pinned.

 

He goes down kicking and snarling, dragged by the ankles from behind the overturned table sheltering him, trying to get the barrel of his gun under the chin of the man grappling him. A shot throws wide, too close to his head, ears ringing in protest. Thick fingers grasp, clench, twist his wrist until he drops his revolver and the first punch breaks his nose. The screaming conversation of gunfire fades back in, exchanging points above him. He has no way of knowing who the fight is favoring, pinned on his back, the sweating weight of the other man bearing down on him, knuckles cracking against hardwood as he jerks clear of the second punch. He drives a knee into the gut on top of him. Fingers wrap around his throat, lift him, slam his head back against the floor. He reels, eyes rolling. The second blow washes the world around him into white, mutes everything but the sound of his own ragged breath mingling with that of the man on top of him. Claustrophobia and the searing fingers of panic dig into his skull behind his eyes. On the third pull, he rises up.

 

Bony arms lock around shoulders, fingers claw at hair. Stubble scrapes his face. An indignant shout floods his ears as teeth meet flesh and latch on. The world heaves around him, dislodges him for just a moment, but he goes snapping after it, clamps down hard and breaks skin like working through gristle. He snarls, shakes away from the hand shoving at his face, flush with adrenaline heat. White noise sings through him, blots out everything but the fingers tearing at his hair and the thrashing force of the larger body pinning him, crushing him. They rise, slam back to the floor, a cascade of sparks defining the line of his spine. A sudden pop and his teeth click around the spray that paints his mouth and cheeks and throat back into form. The mass of flesh leaches panic from his rigid limbs, bucks and rolls, pitches backwards. He rides the swell until he is sprawled atop it. Skin pulls and stretches and snaps. He finds purchase again, stays clamped on, growling high against the wet, wheezing hiss that gurgles up beneath him, chin hot and sticky.

 

“ _ ¡Jesucristo! _ ”

 

An appalled shout slams him back down into the world, his ringing mind jarred with sudden awareness of his body. His hands are on warm, still shoulders, pushing himself up. He spits the meat and blood that clogs his mouth, rubbery, raw. His chest is slick with gore.

 

“…Jesse?”

 

The walls of the bar tilt upright around him as he staggers to his feet, dark paneling swimming around his spinning head, gunsmoke thick and wrapping up his tense, jittering limbs. He straightens, rolls his shoulders back and stands astride a broad chest, shakes himself of the muddy, nervous weight sinking through him. Distant and fuzzy, he puts the heel of his boot into the ragged hole in the throat of the man beneath him, leans his weight down and down and down until he feels something, windpipe or spine, crunch under it. He hunkers warily, eyes sweeping the figures that loom closest in the hazy silence surrounding him. No gunshot takes him. Alvaro resolves first, standing closest, the fire of horror on the other man's face at odds with the cold hollow of his chest, his numb brain wrapped up in his skull.

 

Five of Campión's are sprawled dead across the bar at the back, the floor, slumped in the kitchen doors. A sixth lays at his feet. He scrapes blood off his heel beside the head of the man with the torn out throat, steps over him. In the empty yawn of silence, his footsteps drop louder than they should - heavy, grown - as he retrieves his revolver from where it slid under the overturned table with an aching hand, shoving it in the back of his jeans. Pain throbs behind his eyes and the battered bridge of his nose, blood trickling over his upper lip to join the mess on his face. He weaves between the still figures of Alvaro and Marcella, feels Alvaro's recoil and the weight of eyes, of silence, on his neck. There is light filtering in through the bleary windows of the bar, drawing him towards it through stillness and haze. Figures stand still around him, muddy and grey, as his boots thud too heavy, too big on the hardwood, carrying him swimming through murk until he pushes through the door, passing into open air.

 

The desert sun bleaches the world white for one suspended moment. The truck, the bikes parked in front of the bar, the jagged teeth of the skyline fade back into being slowly before him. Heat warms his bare shoulders and an idle breath of wind plucks at the edges of his vest, stirs through his hair. Across the open road it lazily twists the body hung from the shelter of the charge station; Campión's sniper. He licks blood off his lower lip.

 

A beat, then a break. A cacophony of barking laughter, shouts erupting behind him. “Hoooleee  _ shit!” _ cresting over the hollering and racket pouring out of the bar with the rest of the gang. They spill out around him, skirting his edges and thundering to the bikes. A getaway, in case Campión has backup incoming, a firestorm of engines revving as his boots hit dirt. He clambers into the bed of the truck, with the weapons, hands slick. From the cab, he hears a startled question in Frankie's voice, Alvaro telling her to shut up and drive as the bikes howl around them. The truck lurches into the frisson of them peeling off.

 

By evening, the shock will have wound down. Revulsion will have been transmuted by the shame of fear into congratulatory boasting. They will pour whiskey down his throat while they celebrate, clap him on the back, call him _ coyotito _ and little savage with gore still caked to his chest. He will be a wild story, dangerous and mean, and he will be proud, hair matted stiff and liquor streaking tracks over his skin.

 

Under the open sky, he lays back in the truck bed, no shade between the crates of weapons that will be moved another day, sold to less treacherous parties. The low rumble of the suspension engine hums through his limbs, resonates at adrenaline frequency, scatters him. Eyes closed, he floats on the smell of sweat, the ghost of furious heavy breath and wet choking, the lightness of his chest, and above him the desert sun bakes the blood soaked into his skin.


End file.
